U.S. Navy Tests World’s First Laser Weapons System

The U.S. Navy recently tested the world's first-ever active laser weapons system, which is now deployed and ready for war. The Laser Weapons
System, or LaWS, is now deployed aboard the USS Ponce amphibious transport ship, where CNN was able to witness the system destroy a drone in flight
and moving targets on the Persian Gulf. The system has special materials that release photons, and, at the speed of light, it silently hits an
object, burning it to a temperature of thousands of degrees. Each strike travels 50,000 times the speed of an incoming ICBM.

I've been following a thread by penroc which caught my attention about the use of
lasers... And looky here what happened today!

How cool is that... Well, in a way.

"I can aim that at any particular spot on a target, and disable and destroy as necessary," said Christopher Wells, captain of the USS Ponce.
"It reduces collateral damage—I no longer have to worry about rounds that may go beyond the target and potentially hurt or damage things that I
don't want to hurt or damage." The system, whose strikes are silent and invisible, is currently active at sea, ready on the USS Ponce for an enemy.
It is primarily intended to take on drones, aircraft, and small vessels that could be used in an attack from countries such as Iran and North Korea.
One of the weapon's biggest strengths is its versatility.

That system has been out a while now, they have shot down a drone and it was operational, or at least allowed to be used since 2014. So far it is for
small aircraft, drones and small boats and is a short range weapon.

The system has been deployed on the Ponce for awhile now, but that was operational testing. This was their version of the IOC test, which means it's
now considered operational and is officially available for use.

While this weapon has major cool and bad ass factor there are some issues I have researched about how to defeat a weapon of this caliber. The simple
question I asked is can't an enemy target simply coat their surface with a highly reflective surface material to defeat the laser?

I found a great response from this source so I am
not sure if this is considered cross posting mods:

If you look at reflectances of common materials used to make mirrors with (for example, the topmost graph found on this wiki page), you'll
see that not 100% of the light is reflected, especially at the shorter wavelengths. I'm still looking for a somewhat better source for similar curves
for household mirrors, but I know that the idea is roughly the same -- it's actually pretty difficult to make a mirror that reflects 100% of all
incident light. The light that does not get reflected gets either absorbed (mostly) or transmitted (usually only for very thin film mirrors). The
portion that gets absorbed is transformed into heat, which is transferred into the mirror material. Therefore, if you shine a short-wavelength,
high-power laser beam directly onto a mirror with the intention of damaging the mirror, the power of the laser must be great enough to ensure that the
portion of the light that gets absorbed is great enough to heat up the material sufficiently (and fast enough) to melt it. This makes most laser
weapons only really effective on surfaces with low reflectance (plastics, certain composites, human skin, etc.) thin-walled structures (fuel
tanks, etc.) sensitive electronics (camera's, targeting systems, etc.) etc. Laser weapons (at least, currently) serve a different purpose
than ballistic weapons; they are more a tool for precision work at large distance. These are the same sorts of problems a laser cutting tool
encounters. Most of these sorts of machines can cut effortlessly through plastics, wood, etc. with high precision. However, when cutting through
metal, they can only cut through relatively thin sheets (1cm aluminum already presents too much of a challenge for most machines) because of the high
reflectance of most metals. The efficiency of the machine is also not too great with sheet metal -- a 50 kW machine will normally transfer only a
handful of watts of heat to the focal point.

The system has been deployed on the Ponce for awhile now, but that was operational testing. This was their version of the IOC test, which means it's
now considered operational and is officially available for use.

What I meant was,
In September 2014, the LaWS was declared an operational asset, so the ship commander has permission to use it for self-defense.
In December 2014, the United States Navy reported that the LaWS system worked perfectly, and that the commander of the Ponce is authorized to use the
system as a defensive weapon.
It was in the Persian Gulf at the time. It's still a bit 'space invaders' though...a pinger.

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